1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains generally to knowledge management tools, and more particularly to an integrated computer-based system for capturing and managing legal knowledge in making an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of a lawsuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Litigation, even relatively simple litigation, is complicated and, as a result, expensive. Because of the complexity and the overall vagaries of litigation, skilled lawyers must be used to make many judgment calls during the course of the case. The reliability of the judgment calls relies on both the amount of relevant data gathered and the experience level of the lawyer. But both gathering more data and using more experienced lawyers increase costs. While this may be acceptable if litigation is infrequent, and thus creates a low overhead burden, or in unusual areas, it becomes difficult when litigation volumes increase, particularity in relatively repetitive situations. In those situations defendants, typically large corporations, begin investigating alternate fee arrangements. However, it is difficult balancing risk between the client and the lawyers. And it is especially difficult because this is usually done very early in the case. To even gather enough information to start to make more reasoned decisions may be expensive itself.
Many articles have been written on topic. One is “Alternative Fees for Litigation: Improved Control and Higher Value” by James D. Shopper and Gardner G. Courson, published in ACCA Docket (May 2000). The article illustrates a flowchart used for early case assessment in employment litigation, a very large litigation area in large corporations. The flowchart is reproduced as FIGS. 1A and 1B. The flowchart basically describes and outlines the pre-trial steps performed in employment litigation. While this is helpful, as noted above, large costs are often incurred in this process, due to the amount of data to be collected coupled with the requirement that much of it must be directly handled, managed and/or reviewed by skilled, and thus expensive, lawyers.
Thus it is desirable to reduce the costs of gathering the information and assessing a case but at the same time not lose any of the knowledge provided by the skilled lawyers.